The Lunch Lady is a foodie at heart with a quest to share delicious, simple, wholesome food with anyone who wants to be inspired.

Saturday, June 15, 2013

Square Foot Gardening Explained

I make my plants "toe the line."

A line of jute.

Square Gardening is a great way to do Raised Bed Gardening because it offers the backyard gardener a way to fit a lot of plants into a small & more compact space.

I confess that I didn't know much about it either till I saw it on Pinterest.

So far, I LOVE it!.

It's a great concept. It minimizes weeds, gives your plants sufficient space to grow, and makes everything neat and tidy.

I like neat and tidy.

Every square is 12" by 12" which is an "American square foot" for all of you lovely non-Americans that (actually) read my blog. (Hellooo! I'm glad you are here!)

That is 30.48 cm by 30.48 cm. As much as I love the metric system, I think I like the "foot" idea a bit better here.

The idea is that each square foot is allotted "so many" plants depending on the type of vegetable. For example, you can plant 9 beets, 9 beans, 9 peas, but only 1 tomato, 1 pepper, 1 zucchini. (There are PLENTY of charts out there if you need specific vegetable information.)

So the plants that get rather large need all the nutrients in that square foot of garden.

Every plant has their own spot which is quite handy when you first plant them and they are bit hard to recognize. I made a chart on paper and marked off where, when, and what I planted. We used the chart for the younger boys "Science" homeschooling project.

Some vegetables, like Mesclun lettuce, are sprinkled liberally. I try to plant different squares at different weeks so that I have a constant source of certain vegetables. I planted the beans 1-2 weeks apart.

I planted a lot of vegetables from seed but unfortunately, all my tomato plants got stunted so I bought a few from an organic farm.

Next year, I'm pretty sure I'm just going to buy a bunch of my plants already started, such as all my tomatoes and peppers.

Another great idea is "Companion Planting." More to come on that later!